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Tear down the eastern Gardiner? Debate to start again Wednesday

Mayor Rob Ford says he believes city officials will soon recommend tearing down the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway.

The city and Waterfront Toronto will release a report Wednesday that contains an analysis of four options for the long-debated future of the crumbling 2.4-kilometre stretch east of Jarvis St., which is less than a decade from the end of its useful life.

This particular report will not include a formal recommendation. It will include a detailed evaluation of the options — assessing them by how they would affect travel times, the waterfront, the economy, and other issues.

Senior city bureaucrats will then make a true recommendation to council, likely in the near future.

“We must have a decision on the preferred alternative in the spring of 2014,” deputy city manager John Livey said in October.

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The perennial debate will heat up just in time to factor in the 2014 municipal election.

Under the timeline envisioned by Waterfront Toronto, the next batch of councillors — and, possibly, a different mayor — would make a second decision in spring 2015 on whether to submit the ongoing environmental assessment to the provincial government for approval.

A major project such as a teardown would not likely begin for several years.

Officials have contemplated four possibilities: keeping the elevated expressway and making repairs (for an estimated $230 million); removing the expressway and replacing it with an 8-to-10-lane boulevard (estimated at $240 million to $360 million); removing the expressway and replacing it with a better version that would create space for parks and development ($610 million to $910 million); keeping the expressway but making significant improvements to the streetscape, possibly by removing the two middle lanes ($420 million to $630 million).

Ford said he thinks officials have chosen the boulevard proposal. He said the removal of the Gardiner would cause “traffic chaos.”

“I don’t want to tear it down. I want to maintain it, just like most of Torontonians want it to be maintained,” he told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works committee, said he expects the report to be debated at his committee on March 4.

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Minnan-Wong has been briefed on the report. He would not disclose its contents, but he said he is “concerned” that officials might recommend a teardown.

He derisively referred to the replacement boulevard as a “stroad,” neither street nor road — a strip that would move cars much slower but still too fast to encourage stopping or allow for a pleasant streetside experience.

“It is the futon of transportation solutions. It’s a terrible bed and an awful couch,” he said.

Waterfront Toronto and former mayor David Miller both advocated removal during the last council term. Miller, claiming car trips would only take two minutes longer, said “that’s two minutes for a great city.” Critics said he was underestimating the impact on traffic.

Councillor Paula Fletcher said removing the Gardiner would allow for the best use of scarce waterfront land. Fletcher represents a southeast ward that includes the industrial Port Lands, which have been targeted for hundreds of millions in residential development over the coming decades.

“I think it’s pretty clear, from a land value point of view, and for the build-out of the waterfront over the next 20, 30, 50 years, that the ‘remove’ option is the one,” Fletcher said.

“Would you build out the Port Lands with an elevated expressway or would you take it down and build it out without it? To me, that is the ballot question.”

The contested eastern portion carries the least traffic of any part of the expressway, but it is still busy. The city estimated in 2008 that 120,000 cars per day travel east of Jarvis.

Residents can express their views on the report at a public consultation meeting Thursday from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Toronto Reference Library.

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